Subject: Re: SMTP Minimum Retry Period - Proposal To Modify Mx

From: [email-masked] (Mike S)
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:47:32 -0500

At 06:50 PM 1/12/2004, Vernon Schryver wrote...
>Instead of paying the extra cost to hire an ISP that cares
>enough to not have spamming customers, people complain about the evils
>of blacklists. 

Feh. Once again with an argument based on incorrect assumptions. 

I don't spam. I would preferentially route email direct for two main reasons: 1) privacy - routing via my ISP's outbound SMTP gives them the right to intercept and read my email, according the ECPA; 2) control - sending from my own system allows me to control retry attempts and times, instead of being forced to wait 4 days for my ISP to bounce an undelivered back to me, assuming they don't just silently lose it.

I can't do so because my IP address is on a blacklist. I have cable modem, but the world thinks I'm a dial-up. For that reason alone, having nothing whatsoever to do with spam, I'm forced to give up privacy and control of my communications.

"Anti-spam" initiatives that are based on such blacklists are quite simply the failed results of irrational, fascist thought. Regardless of your exact definition of spam, all reasonable ones I've heard have one thing in common - it's based on CONTENT, not IP address. Blacklists couldn't care less about content - legitimate email or spam, out it goes, to the detriment of communications, which is the Internet's raison d'etre. I take that back, it used to be that way. Now the Internet is meant to make big corporations lots of money.

Blacklists also, quite clearly, don't work to eliminate spam.

---

From: Dean Anderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 21:58:24 -0500 (EST)

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Mike S wrote:

> I don't spam. I would preferentially route email direct for two main
> reasons:

1) privacy - routing via my ISP's outbound SMTP gives them
> the right to intercept and read my email, according the ECPA;

Err, Just the opposite is more freqently the case. Most ISP's usually only
have the right to block spam. Some don't even have that right, if you
don't purchase their spam filter service.  The ECPA specifically prohibits
the ISP from exceeding its limited authority.  There was recently a very
good ECPA case of a company (not an ISP) that exceeded its authority:
Konop V Hawaiian Airlines.

But privacy is still an issue, because you don't know that the ISP's
admins aren't breaking the law.  Reading mail in a mail queue is far
easier than using a sniffer, and much more tempting.  Some ISPs are very
lax on administrator discipline, and some very well-known people such as
Steven Bellovin still claim the ECPA doesn't apply to the internet at all.
[FYI, I will be posting the House and Senate reports (scans of copies, but
mostly readable) on the web with a lot of other information about the ECPA
and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, including cases and other
information, as well as cases involving blacklists and Anti-Trust. The
ECPA house and senate reports are very illuminating.  I'll post a URL if
people are interested.]

2) control - sending from my own system allows me to control retry
> attempts and times, instead of being forced to wait 4 days for my ISP
> to bounce an undelivered back to me, assuming they don't just silently
> lose it.

If your contract allows you to run your own system, then the ISP would not
be allowed to prevent you from doing that.  This could be made into an
ECPA issue---some people think it is merely and only a contract
non-performance issue and said contract excludes liability for failure to
perform.  Like the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the ECPA is a criminal statute
with civil actions permitted, and carries its own civil and criminal
penalties.

Of course, if your contract does not allow you to run your own system,
then you don't have a complaint about blacklists blocking it.

Assuming you have permission to operate your system, then there are many
good reasons besides the ones you've listed to do that.

> I can't do so because my IP address is on a blacklist. I have cable
> modem, but the world thinks I'm a dial-up. For that reason alone,
> having nothing whatsoever to do with spam, I'm forced to give up
> privacy and control of my communications.

This is what anti-trust law is for. A blacklist is group boycott. If it
significantly harms your business, then it is illegal.  The blacklist and
the blacklist subscribers can be (and have been) enjoined from
blacklisting genuine business.

> "Anti-spam" initiatives that are based on such blacklists are quite
> simply the failed results of irrational, fascist thought. Regardless
> of your exact definition of spam, all reasonable ones I've heard have
> one thing in common - it's based on CONTENT, not IP address.
> Blacklists couldn't care less about content - legitimate email or
> spam, out it goes, to the detriment of communications, which is the
> Internet's raison d'etre. I take that back, it used to be that way.
> Now the Internet is meant to make big corporations lots of money.
>

True.  But rational argument isn't enough to overcome irrational facist,
thought. For that we have courts and laws.

		--Dean

---

From: [email-masked] (Mike S)
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 22:35:30 -0500

At 09:58 PM 1/12/2004, Dean Anderson wrote...
>Err, Just the opposite is more freqently the case.The ECPA specifically prohibits the ISP from exceeding its limited authority.

Cite, please. I've got one:

"(2)(a)(i) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for an ... agent of a provider  of  wire  or  electronic communication  service,  whose facilities  are used in the transmission of a wire or  electronic communication, to intercept, disclose, or use that  communication in the normal  course of his employment..."

>with civil actions permitted, and carries its own civil and criminal

My ISP's support of the MAPS DUL, and the use of the MAPS system by others, is a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030. Email me for details, but I've covered this on this list recently.

>then you don't have a complaint about blacklists blocking it.

There is nothing to prohibit direct routing of email.

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:45:49 -0700 (MST)

> From: [email-masked] (Mike S)

> ...

> ...
> I can't do so because my IP address is on a blacklist. I have
> cable modem, but the world thinks I'm a dial-up. For that reason
> alone, having nothing whatsoever to do with spam, I'm forced to
> give up privacy and control of my communications.

Mr. Sauve could rent an IP address that is not on dial-up or dynamic
blacklists and run his systems there.  A remote co-lo or hosting service
would cost more than the $30/month or whatever slum rate he is paying
for cable modem service.  Or he could convince his correspondents to
whitelist his IP address or stop using the relevant blacklists.  Either
he has not tried that, his correspondents also pay slum rates for slum
service, or they don't want enough to hear from him to increase their
spam loads.

Perhaps I should ask if Mr. Sauve is violating the terms of service
of his ISP.  What does Charter say about "servers"?  Did Charter
give Mr. Sauve's IP address to the blacklists that bother him?

Or perhaps he has already rented an IP address that is not dynamic.
But if he has done that, where is his complaint?  Is it just
Interveloce/GO International's rates?

> "Anti-spam" initiatives that are based on such blacklists are
> quite simply the failed results of irrational, fascist thought.

In that he is calling his correspondents irrational fascists, because
it is they who have chosen to reject his mail.

Never mind that facism has something to do with "centralized autocratic
government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social
regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition" and that seems
like the opposite of the anarchy of blacklists.
Also ignore the fact that a taxi or pizza delivery service refusing
to go to dangerous parts of town is no more irrational than refusing
mail from the IP address neighborhoods that are major sources of spam.
Any individual is unlikely to be a spammer or mugger, but the statistical
risk/reward ratio is too high.  By all accounts, the odds that the the
next SYN to your port 25 from a "dynamic" IP address involve spam are
very high.

> Regardless of your exact definition of spam, all reasonable ones
> I've heard have one thing in common - it's based on CONTENT, not
> IP address. Blacklists couldn't care less about content 

That's nonsense.  Blacklists do care about content in a statistical
sense.  If blacklists don't care about content, then neither do so
called Bayseian filters.  I've often said that lists like the DUL bug
me, but not because they are useless.  Lists like the DUL catch a
lot of spam and little legitimate mail.

>                                                      - legitimate
> email or spam, out it goes, to the detriment of communications,
> which is the Internet's raison d'etre. I take that back, it used
> to be that way. Now the Internet is meant to make big corporations
> lots of money.

I've been around for a few years (TIP-25 (DOCB) in 1972), but I don't
recall that Communication in the sense Mr. Sauve means was ever the
Internet's raison d'etre.  15 years ago, would be communalists were
bemoaning the commercialization of the net and interference with
capital-C-Communication, by which they meant they deserved free
bandwidth.  Their successors complain about the free ride they never
got.  Back in Mr. Sauve's golden era, his perfect unfiltered IP bandwdith
was either not available to small or commercial outfits like Alientech
LLC or it would have cost 2000% more (>$5000/year) for 10% as many
bits/sec (56K).

> Blacklists also, quite clearly, don't work to eliminate spam. 

No honest person who actually looks at spam agrees with that.
Good blacklists (e.g. CRL) are better than 70% effective with 
false negative rates that large, very conservative corportations
can tolerate.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Nathaniel Borenstein <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 07:56:46 -0500

I'm sorry, I know I said I wasn't going to be lured into another 
exchange in this thread, but I can't help it...

On Monday, January 12, 2004, at 10:45  PM, Vernon Schryver wrote:

> blacklists and run his systems there.

In other words, because some ISP with whom he has NO relationship has 
deemed his own ISP spam-friendly, he should abandon his ISP, whether 
*he* thinks they are spam-friendly or not. The words that come to mind 
to describe this sort of arrangement are "cartel," "blackmail," and 
"extortion."  It is also a perfect example of an assertion I made 
before, which is that blacklists are being used by the large ISP's as a 
tool for consolidation in the ISP market.  When RoadRunner blocked my 
ISP, the *only* thing they were helpful about was offering to help me 
get "better" Internet service by changing ISPs.

> No honest person who actually looks at spam agrees with that.

As I've made clear, *I* agree with that.  Given the exchanges that 
preceded this, it sounds like you are asserting that I -- and all the 
other people who have argued against you in good faith on this list -- 
are dishonest.  Is everyone who disagrees with your conclusions 
necessarily dishonest?  If so, why are you wasting time talking with 
us?  -- Nathaniel

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 08:42:01 -0700 (MST)

> From: Nathaniel Borenstein <[email-masked]>

> get "better" Internet service by changing ISPs.

Exactly the same charges can be made about taxis, pizza delivery
services, and so forth that refuse to deliver to "bad" parts of the
real world.  Perhaps in some cases you are right, but in the vast
majority you are wrong.  Is a simple, undeniable fact that the sources
of spam are concentrated in a small fraction of the IPv4 address space.
For example, the last numbers I saw about SPEWS had it listing a tiny
fraction of 1% of the IPv4 address space.

There are other problems with your theory.  The biggest is the link
between the big ISPs and the blacklisters.  Besides the undeniable
spammers (e.g. the ROKSO members), it is the big ISPs that are most
likely to be blacklisted, particularly in "dialup" or "dynamic"
blacklists.  According to your theory, Charter Communications is part
of a conspiracy of big outfits to drive away their own customers by
blacklisting their own IP addresses.  How sane and honest is that?

If you are saying that blacklists and boycotts are dangerous weapons,
then you're certainly right.  That's why contrary to my naive reading
of the U.S. Constitution, there are federal laws that limit or outlaw
boycotts in some circumstances that I don't understand.  
See http://www.google.com/search?q=%22secondary+boycott%22

Exactly what do you want? 
  - a U.S. Federal law against IP address blacklists?
  - a test for social responsibility and good sense given prospective
      IP address blacklist opererators administrated by the IESG?
  - a U.N. regulation prohibiting stupidity and foolishness by users
      and ISPs while choosing blacklists?

Pardon me, but it seems you want the IETF to declare that all blacklisting
and spam rejecting by IP address wrong and nasty.  As far as I can
tell, you would require me to accept mail from 69.6.0.0/18 because you
fear I might refuse mail from you.  Or perhaps you would allow me to
reject Wholesalebandwidth spam provided I not tell anyone.

> us?

You might be ignorant instead of dishonest.  If you have not looked
any blacklists except those that have affected your mail, then you
have not, in my words, really looked at spam.

Are you calling me and those who point out that some blacklists 
detect 70-90% of spam with false positive rates below 1% liers?
It your words could be read that way.

---

From: Nathaniel Borenstein <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 11:13:26 -0500

On Tuesday, January 13, 2004, at 10:42  AM, Vernon Schryver wrote:

> You might be ignorant instead of dishonest.

How very kind of you to consider two possibilities, thank  you.

> detect 70-90% of spam with false positive rates below 1% liers?

Calling someone a liar is simply not my style, nor did I use any words 
that were remotely close to doing so.  If I could see anything in my 
words that could possibly be construed that way I would apologize for 
it.  (And, by the way, I consider *any* false positives unacceptable if 
there's no suitable mechanism for detecting and correcting them.)

This discussion is going nowhere, so I'm going back to more serious 
work on comprehensive spam control.  -- Nathaniel

---

From: [email-masked] (Mike S)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 07:21:53 -0500

At 10:45 PM 1/12/2004, Vernon Schryver wrote...
>blacklists and run his systems there.

Proven wrong, you now change your argument to one of trying to rationalize interference with legitimate email, and attempting to place the burden on those who wish to use the Internet as designed, not as damaged by your beloved blacklists.

As I said, fascist.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:48:57 -0500

> As I said, fascist.

Godwin.

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 09:54:37 -0700 (MST)

> How very kind of you to consider two possibilities, thank  you.

My original words that you felt labelled you dishonest explicitly
included that possibility.  Most people have strong opinions about
spam, but have not really looked at it, and are quite wrong about it.

> ...
>      (And, by the way, I consider *any* false positives unacceptable if 

That wisdom applies to a lot more than spam defenses.

However, it is worth noting that many and perhaps most email users
value avoiding false negatives more than avoiding false positives in
their spam defenses.  That is one reason why the blunt, high false
positive blacklists are popular.  One also must not try to reduce false
positives from spam filters much below the error rate of SMTP in the
real world (e.g. not just bounces but blackholes).

> work on comprehensive spam control.  

That's fine, but it would be wise to recognize the overall situation
while developing those comprehensive controls.  Railing against the
evil conspiracy of big monopolistic ISPs using blacklists against
themselves isn't productive.  Except for organizations that run their
own private blacklists, public anti-spam blacklists will remain quite
popular.  MAPS used to claim 45% of the Internet used the RBL.  I
suspect that at least that much uses the RBL+, CRL, XBL, SBL, and/or
SPEWS.  Public blacklists are here to stay, because they work.

The only likely tactic for reducing the use of blunt blacklists such
as those listing dynamic IP addresses is to convince ISPs to take network
abuse seriously.  As long as big ISPs make listing their own IP adddresses
"dynamic" lists their main response to their own bad customers, those
blunt, high false positive blacklists will remain popular.

Talk about transition plans to IPv6, comprehensive spam controls,
the evils of NAT, the evils of blacklists, media conglomerate ISPs
distributing NAT boxes to break VoIP, and monopolisitic ISPs using
blacklists is one thing.  Actually doing something is something else.

---

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:46:17 -0800

>On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 07:21:53 EST, [email-masked] (Mike S)  said:

Valdis, you have confused two protocols that produced similar results 
but used different underlying transports and different signalling.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 14:38:31 -0500

> but used different underlying transports and different signalling.

Call it a pre-emptive first strike.  Rate we're going here, it'll be Godwin time soon enough ;)

---

From: Dean Anderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 11:28:36 -0500 (EST)

> >Err, Just the opposite is more freqently the case.The ECPA
> >specifically prohibits the ISP from exceeding its limited authority.
>
> "(2)(a)(i) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for an ...
> agent of a provider of wire or electronic communication service, whose
> facilities are used in the transmission of a wire or electronic
> communication, to intercept, disclose, or use that communication in
> the normal course of his employment..."

"Normal course of employment" is the operative phrase. Exceeding
authorization is not part of the normal course of employment.  The section
you quote also goes on to prohibit service monitoring except for random
quality control checks. Reading email in excess of the limited
authorization to block spam isn't a quality control check, either.

Also, the section you quote is the wiretap act, which covers
communications on the wire. The ECPA extends this and provides coverage of
stored and temporarilly stored communications, ie, when they are on a mail
server or in the memory of a router or server.

> My ISP's support of the MAPS DUL, and the use of the MAPS system by
> others, is a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030. Email me for details, but
> I've covered this on this list recently.

I missed your statements on this, but I'll look back in the archives.
MAPS has been successfully sued for anti-trust violations in Exactis V
MAPS.  That case was settled after the MAPS defense (First Amendment) was
rejected, and its attorney's chastised. Reportedly, MAPS agreed never to
block Exactis, and agreed to specific monetary damages if it did.  Exactis
continued to do what it was doing, single opt-out advertising.

> There is nothing to prohibit direct routing of email.

Point taken.  Some mail clients route directly. But they probably
shouldn't do that for other reasons having to do with lack of information
about mail routing.  But, I suppose one can say they are allowed to
anyway.

		--Dean